What is the 'handwriting' feature and how do I use it?

I just got the Samsung Galaxy S3 and I'm wondering what the handwriting feature is about. I enabled it, then instead of swyping for words as per normal, I started to try and write 'over' the keyboard, like a cursive 'hi' or just writing letters in cursive. Is this not what the handwriting feature is supposed to be?

If it is supposed to do something different, what is handwriting supposed to do?

Pencil....nope...not unless you mean the Swype button? The thing you hold to access Swype settings? (when i tap it, nothing happens, and I can't seem to do any sort of gesture-handwriting as you suggest)

I'm not especially sure, unfortunately. I know sliding your finger forward gives you space and backwards gives you backspace, and that a vertical line crossed by a horizontal one gives you T.

Again, I doubt western users have much of a reason to use this now. You can probably glide a word or two by the time you can write one letter in handwriting mode. I mean, granted, you can write around four letters in the space provided, but that's not preferable when you have longer words either.

Again, I daresay this is only for users of Eastern languages, who have much more detailed symbols that mean much more, and thousands of them to keep track of. I don't know enough Chinese, Japanese etc to show you a good example, but here's an idea...